


his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame

by alatarmaia4



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, more tumblr fic, this got sad quick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8428066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: me, rambling about Gabriel online (title is from the song Gabriel's Message)





	

**Author's Note:**

> me, rambling about Gabriel online (title is from the song Gabriel's Message)

so much of the time gabriel’s seen as a shallow, lighthearted trickster, but for real (this hit me while i was mulling on his perspective for a tough scene)-

the number of people gabriel has loved is just about a 1:1 ratio with the number of people he has lost

(and how many of those numbers are the same people on both sides?)

the angels? lucifer fell. gabriel was nobody’s favorite and lucifer, his mentor, Fell. gabriel wasn’t _allowed_ to love him anymore. and he left heaven so long ago - nevermind the multitude of non-archangels (who knows what they were told, what they might think of him) - do you think gabriel ever wondered what would happen if he went back? 

because if you think he ever stopped loving his family you’re so, so wrong, but here’s the thing - they have their own way of loving back, and it comes in ways that are more ‘for his own good’. what would michael do? look at what he did to lucifer in the name of Good and The Plan, and lucifer was michael’s favorite. raphael’s favorite is michael, you can bet she’ll side with michael over anybody, even gabriel - what would they do to him if they saw him again?

and we know he hid out as loki, but _god,_ that’s even more tragic - if you know even a scrap of norse mythology you know that. loki’s been demonized as Norse Satan™ - admittedly by people who don’t understand his role in mythology in the least, but what about the people who _do_. what about loki’s brother, odin. what about frigg, his sister-in-law of sorts. what about baldr and thor and the rest?

here’s the answer: they hate his guts. loki killed baldr. odin killed loki’s children back.

loki’s children - there’s a tangle (what about the nephilim?) but if you believe gabriel (as loki) had them, then - it’s horrible. it’s a tragedy. six children and half of them (or two and one half) are dead and sleipnir alone escapes enduring horrible torture - the same kind of thing they inflict on loki later - because he’s odin’s prize stallion. odin’s _prize_.

if those stories are real, how well do you think gabriel dealt with it?

(the answer: not well. he burned his own pantheon down and dragged them to the end of the world for it; if one story is true, the rest probably are)

and then; the trickster. i’ve always thought the trickster and loki were separate, that the trickster came later - here is a god whose own pantheon hates him, who hid and lied and built himself a family that died or was chained or betrayed him - so he reduces himself again, to something with not even a proper name, just a noun describing what he _is_. he flees to america probably - back then it was probably brand fuckin’ new, to the europeans.

and then what? he entertains himself for the ensuing centuries until we arrive at SPN canon? the trickster’s victims were never entertainment, they were the last vestiges of Gabriel making themselves known - the teacher, the messenger, trying to give humanity one last message to differentiate bad and good - but he’s been loki for a while know ( _was_ loki) so there’s a certain amount of viciousness in it, too, and he probably shrugs and does whatever he wants for whatever reason

(he’s denied the name ‘gabriel’ and his whole existence when he held that name - did he do the same for loki, too? in ‘american gods’, america holds a lot of copycats - pale shadows of the same gods cast in a new land. do you think there was another loki, and gabriel just denied he’d ever been one and let his new, New World shadow take his place?)

(do you think he ever let himself remember?)

(do you think he ever looked for his father, like castiel did?)

(i do)

the trickster probably entered the roaring 20′s and never looked back - oh, he was like that before, excess and indulgence and all the good stuff with no moderation because why bother with worrying? but i feel like the kind of society someone like Gatsby could have theoretically existed in is one he would have _reveled_ in

and y’know, he’s pretty old, and he doesn’t change easily (evidence: 1400 years or so and he still loves his family even though they’re all dicks) so: the trickster is a creature of excess and wild abandon, and he glories in it.

this sets the stage, probably, but here’s the thing: we never know what the trickster thinks. anything hinting at a higher motive in the show itself is all, guess who-

(answer: gabriel)

i don’t doubt he knew who the winchesters were as soon as he saw them. he knew. he knew what they were going to do and what was going to happen and he knew he’d get dragged back into it. maybe not how - but he knew. that kind of prophecy was written in the core of him right next to where he still loved lucifer. 

and looking back - can you blame him for wanting to stave it off? the apocalypse was the last scraps of the family he knew being thrown in the fire by brothers he grew up with, as much as angels ever grow up.

what else could he do?

**Author's Note:**

> comment, please?


End file.
